


Ougi Parallel

by nullvalue



Category: Bakemonogatari
Genre: CW: Body Horror, mitsugimonogatari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nullvalue/pseuds/nullvalue
Summary: After the events of Zoku Owarimonogatari, Ougi finds themself adrift; having been severed from their original purpose, their existence now feels aimless. When this bizarre apparition enters a bizarre space, a predictably bizarre event occurs, and for the first time they're given their own chance to look deep inside the mirror. There, they're confronted with the uncomfortable question:Just who is Oshino Ougi, really?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for Mitsugimonogatari, the first english-language Monogatari fan zine. It's my first finished story of this length, and my first big paid commission in my life. Completing it was a long and difficult struggle, but with the support of my editor Staffen, I was able to make it happen. In my heart, this story is dedicated to him.
> 
> Please visit https://twitter.com/Mitsugimono_ENG to learn more about the project, and read the rest of the zine! I'm honored to be featured alongside all the other hardworking contributors. For everyone who was patient and supportive during the long, long writing process, thank you very much. This story ended up being very meaningful to me.
> 
> I want to write more like this in the future. Please cheer me on, and leave a comment with your feedback; I'll do my best to improve even more.
> 
> -NULL VALUE

Oshino Ougi is Oshino Ougi.

You might have heard that phrase spoken by another mouth of mine, or read it written by another hand of mine. It's a backhanded, teasing kind of name, a confusing and ambiguous kind of name, which fits me perfectly.

Oshino Ougi is Oshino Ougi.

In other words, zero equals zero. A seemingly pointless equation that could solve only the most abstract of problems. A redundant and awkward sentence. Because the result is zero, no one needs to bother with it, except of course for mathematicians, who love to dwell on lofty abstracts.

Zero is, by its nature, abstract and incomprehensible. There's no way to imagine it properly, because it isn't anything. It exists only in the realm of the theoretical.

However, it is familiar, if only to a very limited extent. Because we use it in our daily lives, we can just think of it as 'nothing,' or 'an absence.' Zero isn't too frightening to contemplate from a layman’s perspective, certainly not compared to infinity.

So I am not zero. Just like I am not the "darkness." I do have an identity. I am a person. 

Oshino Ougi is Oshino Ougi.

You could say that I am the reflection of Araragi Koyomi, and you would be correct. You could say that I am Araragi Koyomi himself, and you would be correct. But that no longer constitutes the fullness of my being. Because of a meddlesome cat, the "lie" of my identity came undone. Rather than a fabrication with no basis, I became Oshino Ougi, niece to Oshino Meme.

It's not unlike Pinocchio becoming a real boy.

My singular objective in life, the reason I was born, has concluded. I'm no longer someone who can define myself entirely by my motivations. Because there is "truth" to me now, I exist regardless of whether I have a reason to exist. A classic human conundrum.

Oshino Ougi is Oshino Ougi.

So, I can no longer define my existence completely based on Araragi Koyomi. I am still him, and he is still me. But he is also him, and I am also me. Something like a Venn diagram, perhaps-- that little bit sticking out from the majority is all that I am.

Whether it was a good idea or not, I am no longer just an 'Oddity,' or just Araragi Koyomi. I am a person. Oshino Ougi is no longer a null variable. 

When I rule out so many things to define myself by, I'm left with that seemingly meaningless tautology once again, bouncing around in the recesses of my mind.

So, class, get out your pencils. It’s time for a pop quiz; don’t worry, there’s only one problem to solve.

Oshino Ougi is not zero.

Solve for Oshino Ougi.

Don’t forget to show your work.


	2. Chapter 2

As previously stated, in the eyes of the ineffable powers that be, I am now Oshino Meme’s niece. I have been granted the right to exist. However, with the right to exist also necessarily comes the  _ obligation _ to exist. Were I to spend all my time in the nonexistent classroom which has become my regular haunt, I may no longer qualify. So I make sure to exist for at least a few hours every day. On this particular day, I was enjoying a walk in the brisk night air.

This town (you don't even know the name of it, do you?) has almost no night-life whatsoever. It was nearing 1AM, and the streets were all but abandoned. I took pleasure in walking in the middle of the street, standing in an intersection and watching the traffic signals blink red all around me.

Are you familiar with the concept of a 'liminal space,' dear reader? It's important to this story, so I'll let you in on it. The full description is a little academic, but the essence is that a liminal space is one between two points. It's a place that only exists to bring you somewhere else, and when you're alone in such spaces, especially when they're usually populated, it can feel like the real is becoming surreal.

Sometimes it's more literal, like the intersection I now stood in; a patch of ground where one is all but forced to move from A to B. Often, that eerie feeling of not-travelling is much more subtle. Maybe you've felt this if you were in an empty train station, or in a quiet waiting room after hours. Devoid of its usual context, these mundane places become very strange indeed. One ends up focusing on all the little details they wouldn't have caught before, fixated as they were on reaching their true destination.

In a town like this, where feelings, metaphors and symbols can create a drastic impact on the world like the flapping of a butterfly's wings across the sea, these liminal spaces are powerful. I adore them. I make a hobby out of treating the journey as the destination. ‘Psychogeography,’ as Debord calls it.

...Uh oh. Is that my unique personality showing? How embarrassing.

It's this proclivity of mine that drove me to turn on a whim, zeroing in on a nearby office building that stretched up into the hazy night sky.

While we're discussing my hobbies, did you know that most places of business are terribly insecure? Even those who try to guard their secrets make any number of embarrassing missteps.

Here's a little trick you can try if you feel like doing some criminal trespassing, as I often do. If you see a set of glass double doors, press against the glass and peek upward. Sometimes, there will be a sensor mounted there. The supposed function is that it will automatically unlock when approached from one side, while denying entry from the other. But it's a terribly flawed system, and often poorly installed.

I still had some coffee left from an eventful stop at the local FamilyMart earlier, so I simply took a swig, pressed my face up to the crack between the doors, and spat a cloud of caffeinated mist right through it, tripping the sensor and unlocking the door with an audible 'click.'

Tadaaaa. I hope you have fun with that one.

Although I used a very human method of entry, I'm still far from human myself. One of the benefits of my inhumanity is that I could tell the building was completely empty, no guards anywhere. It's laughable, really. The crime rate in this town is evidently so low that they effectively leave the doors wide open.

For a time, I enjoyed wandering around the lobby, sifting through the security desk, leaving a little note to politely inform them of my visit. Once my interest in the ground floor had waned, I made my way to the elevators. The 'ding' as it arrived rung pleasantly through the empty space, and I didn't hesitate to step inside as soon as the doors opened.

I was planning on going on about the flaws of elevator security, which is a whole study unto itself, when I discovered I'd accidentally stepped into the inciting incident of the story. Oh well. Another time, then.

The doors closed behind me, and I was taken aback. Despite the relatively conservative design of the ground floor, someone had made a strange decision.

Every wall of the elevator was mirrored from floor to ceiling. Unbelievably, even the doors were mirrored. I can't imagine why; the effect was dizzying.

An infinite number of elevators surrounded me, containing Ougi after adorable Ougi. When I lifted my hand, infinite reflections did the same, each alternating, facing toward and away from me. The gradual decay of reflected light created a hazy effect, each Ougi becoming dimmer the further out they were.

I instantly knew something was going to happen. I could feel it in the air. This was no longer the realm of the mundane.

An elevator, after all, is the ultimate liminal space. A tiny room that exists only to bring you somewhere else. Unless it's broken or you're a maintenance worker, few people would have good reason to spend much time inside. Lingering within quickly fills the air with a tinge of surreality.

Normally, this wouldn't have been quite enough. But the addition of these inexplicable full-size mirrors to such a space created a natural focal point for the bizarre. It's enough to make me wonder if it was done on purpose.

I slowly turned around, observing the ocean of Ougis that surrounded me, each copying my faintly bemused smile. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I soon found it. An anomaly. One of the reflections was unlike the others, a distant splash of color where there should have only been the red-trimmed blackness of my gakuran.

Naturally, I had to investigate. They say curiosity kills the cat, but it can also reveal new prey. Not to say that I was intending to prey upon anything, but I simply could not resist the opportunity to embark on a new mystery.

I pressed up to the silvered glass, staring into my own dark eyes. This reflection was behaving as intended; the anomaly was further down the ranks, obscured by my doppelganger behind the glass. 

It felt appropriately solid, as a mirror should be, but that's hardly enough to stop something like me. I pushed, not just with physical force, but in a way that's difficult to describe to a human audience. Let's just say that I  _ asserted _ myself, and the mirror yielded.

I could feel my black-gloved hands slowly sinking into the mirror, like breaking the surface tension on an impossibly thick bubble. The glass slid over me, my body passing through my own reflection--


	3. Chapter 3

\--and I stumbled out on the other side.

The world beyond the mirror looked much as it did from the outside. Effectively it was like merely stepping into a different elevator, but the air was different. Color and sound were just slightly wrong; the subtlety of that wrongness only drew more attention to it.

Behind me was an out-of-place gap: the empty elevator I had just left. Curiously, even without me there to cast my reflection onto the mirrored walls, there was still an Ougi on the far side, copying my movements along with the infinite ranks. Turning back around, I came face to face with myself, standing in the same elevator, staring curiously at me just as I stared curiously at them. When I spoke, they did too, causing a strange reverberation. 

"This is nothing like what happened before." 

I thought back to that inconsistent mirror-world my 'partner' pulled into our own, filled with humorous reversals of the people in his life. All backwards signs, lovable fanservice and character growth. This, as they say, was a horse of a different color. The space I had stepped into was ominous and quiet. Perhaps it was only natural, for a world centered around me.

Now that I was through the mirror, moving between the endless elevators was no longer an issue. My reflections looked as though they were walking, yet they didn't move, as if they were rooted to the spot in the center of their own 'cell,' reminding me of a glitch in a video game. I couldn't help but feel that I had fundamentally broken something simply by entering such a place.

It didn't take long to find the anomaly once again. Without my own reflections in the way, I could view it more properly.

It was me, of course, but it was not the same me. The splash of color I had seen turned out to be a cute and stylish red dress, something I had never worn before. This Ougi still wore long sleeves, gloves and leggings to conceal themselves, as they should, yet they had also grown their raven hair to a more traditionally feminine length, and something about their expression seemed softer, in a way that I found difficult to quantify.

A drop of jealousy stirred unbidden inside me. This Ougi looked... Happy. As though they had figured something out that I had failed to grasp. It couldn't be merely a simple change of clothes and a new hairstyle, surely. Even with that green tinge of envy, this did not feel like the answer I was looking for.

Looking for?

I stepped back for a moment, turning to examine the elevator's buttons, which hung transparently in the air like they were concealed by a cloaking field. Was I looking for something? An answer to a question?

Having read the prologue, you will of course recall the very question to which I refer. At the time, I confess, I had not narrowed the source of my vague discomfort to a crisis of identity. I was so focused on providing Araragi with introspection that it never properly occurred to me to look inside myself; on some subconscious level, I still didn't believe I was a separate entity.

Yes, this is definitely embarrassing, telling a story like this, pulling back the curtain on my mysterious character. Once an enigma is explained, it loses its 'power.' Reminds you of my partner, doesn't it? I'm not above falling victim to his follies, it seems.

Oh well. If you're disappointed with the 'truth' I provide, you can simply make your own, like rewriting the unsatisfying finale to your favorite TV series.

In any case.

That office building had seven floors, so this panel had seven numbers. Unable to suppress my curiosity, I pressed one at random, and the air filled with a low rumble that resonated through my entire body.

_ Ding. _

The doors slid open, and sunlight fell upon me. I saw a familiar park bench, and upon it sat Araragi and this long-haired self of mine, seemingly oblivious to the doors that had opened before them.

"Give me a break, Ougi-chan! I spent all my money on that Snitch thing you wanted for your birthday."

"Switch," I heard myself correct him, a mischievous yet gentle smile on my face. I was wearing that red dress, and clinging to his arm. "Surely you have enough to get me that non-rotating sushi you never treated me to. It's only fair, Araragi-senpai, after I single-handedly saved the day."

"Single-handedly is a bit..." Araragi slumped defeatedly, scratching the back of his head and looking frazzled. I heard my feminine double let out a genuine laugh, squeezing his arm possessively.

Then the doors slid shut again, just as they normally would, leaving me staring at my more accurate reflection on the other side.

The dress-wearing Ougi on the bench looked happy. I, admittedly, did not. My ever-present and lovely smile had fallen from my face, seeing as there was no one to show it to.

What was I meant to make of that...?

Left mildly perturbed and restless, I moved on, choosing a direction at random and walking quietly past the endless doubles who faithfully copied my movements from the center of their little display-cases.

Clearly this place was attempting to impart some message, and my mind reflexively picked away at what it could be, trying to solve it like a puzzle. Were these reflections portraying who I could be, or different parts of who I was? Or both? Did some part of me really want to get lovey-dovey with my own other half on a sunny park bench?

I'd never try it regardless. Senjougahara-senpai would gouge my eyes out with a protractor.

The next anomaly that caught my eye was an Ougi who looked somewhat more mature, standing several inches taller than myself and wearing a smartly tailored dark-brown suit with a flat cap.

Well, don't you look handsome?

I couldn't resist pressing a button. Again the air vibrated with the deep rumble of the metaphysical elevator, and the doors opened into an office at night. There I was, sitting at a lamplit desk, a faint smile on my face as three other adults, two women and a man, talked and laughed behind me, sharing beers after work.

"You should have seen this guy!" the man exclaimed joyfully, gesturing to me with his bottle. "As soon as we showed up on the scene, you could practically hear the gears turning in his head, like, 'vzzz!'"

'His?' So this reflection was living as a man, it seemed. From a dress to a suit... I wasn't sure how to feel about either.

"Seriously, it was some Sherlock Holmes shit, man. Araragi was trying to talk to the witness, and then Oshino just comes up and cuts him off like, 'You can let her go now, Araragi-senpai. I believe I've found the solution already.' You should have seen the look on his face!"

Ah. My eyes fell to the badge sitting beside the other me: the word 'Detective' was just visible. My detective-self wore a satisfied smirk, enjoying the praise.

"Hey, come on, join us, Oshino!" said one of the women. "You've totally earned a break."

"Ahaha." Well, my laugh hadn't changed much. "Maybe if you treat me to some non-rotating sushi..."

The doors closed, leaving me in silence once again.

Two Ougis, one feminine and one masculine, each becoming 'partners' with Araragi in their own new way. Having some presence in the world.

That didn't sound too bad.

Yet neither of them were the right bowl of porridge, so to speak. I doubted I would get along well with police officers, for one thing.

I shoved my gloved hands into my pockets, my head swimming. Normally I would act like I knew just what was happening to stay in control of the narrative, but I had no one to perform for, so the vague melancholy crept its way onto my features.

Neither fit me just right, but neither was entirely wrong, either. I was becoming increasingly convinced that these were fragments of myself just as much as they were visions of a possible future.

On I walked with no aim in mind, passing uncountable reflections for what felt like days. Every so often, one would catch my eye, and I would push the button to watch a sliver of their life.

An Ougi who had decided to make electronic music.

An Ougi who had become surprisingly close with Hanekawa-senpai.

An Ougi who wore a spiked leather jacket and buzzcut hair.

An empty elevator, whose Ougi had been swallowed by the Darkness.

An Ougi living with their 'uncle' and Kaiki, who had gotten married.

An Ougi who had donned a strange outfit, using an alias and calling herself the ‘Witch of Enigma.’

An Ougi who did business for the Yakuza, making people ‘disappear.’

An Ougi who entered a relationship with Araragi and wore a maid outfit around the house.

An Ougi who followed Meme around incessantly, serving as his begrudging sidekick.

An Ougi who moved to America and became a successful author.

An Ougi who had ceased to leave the empty classroom, laying on the floor in a miserable torpor.

An Ougi who had successfully exterminated Tsukihi without Araragi's knowledge, and lived to regret it as they watched him mourn.

Some were boys. Some were girls. Some, it turned out, were neither.

Ougi after Ougi after Ougi had their lives spread out before me, enough to make my head spin. I found myself unsure what to make of it all, like an enormous, chaotic jigsaw puzzle where I couldn't find a single edge piece.

Then, after what must have been countless miles of walking, I saw another empty elevator.

The cell beyond was empty, too. And the one beyond that. And the adjacent ones as well. An ominous patch of emptiness that continued to spread wider the more I advanced.

As I pressed onward, a familiar sensation began to scratch at the back of my mind. Cold. Empty.

Dark.

Soon, a shape came into view, standing out from the abandoned space around it. It was an elevator door, already open, with nothing but darkness beyond.

I stopped before it, narrowing my eyes to try and pierce through the darkness. It likely won't surprise you that an inhuman creature like myself has no trouble seeing in the dark, yet this was a veil my eyes couldn't pierce.

This, it seemed, was the destination on the other side of that liminal space.

So I stepped through, and the darkness surrounded me.


	4. Chapter 4

Void.

Nothing but the pure darkness of being buried alive.

I could not perceive any walls or floors; I was somehow vaguely aware that I was walking forward, but the air was suffocating. My footsteps made no sound, swallowed by the silence.

No. Not silence.

There was an intangible thickness to the air, and with it came an oppressive quiet, a sensory deprivation that felt as though it were watching me, pressing on me, testing me.

I began to understand.

This was not the absence of light. This was the presence of darkness, heavy and choking darkness that writhed subtly across my skin. Nor was this the absence of sound; the air was thick with an oppressive silence that pushed itself down my throat and into my ears. As though it were a deafening noise at a frequency so low I could not truly process it.

I walked onward, impassive. After all I had seen, the lives I did not have, the laughter I did not share, I felt empty. Numb. It was not the first time. I knew this darkness.

Gradually, a shape began to emerge from the infinitely dense nothing. A tall rectangle like a monolith rising out of the cloying black haze. It was a bookcase of simple construction, black and cold and unwelcoming. This was not a bookcase fit to contain entertainment nor enlightenment. It seemed to know everything about me.

There were books on the shelves. They were black and white, distributed seemingly at random with many gaps in between. None had a title on the spine. Their arrangement reminded me of a visualized genome sequence.

I got the strange feeling that one of those books contained my own autopsy report.

I reached forward through the darkness, seized by morbid curiosity. It's something I feel often.

Then I froze.

Eyes were on me.

"You came to me, Ougi."

That voice. It was cold and dark with a poisoned razor edge. Toxic blackness boiled underneath. A voice that sounded incapable of good intentions.

It was my voice.

"Yes, it is." My voice spoke to me again, and I retracted my hand, directing my gaze upward. My movements were slow, quiet and difficult, like the helplessness sometimes found in dreams.

Above me, atop the tall bookcase, I saw myself. I couldn't recall how many of myself I had seen that day, but they all melted away before that pale, greyish face that smiled down at me.

For once, my own showed no such sinister levity.

"You were drawn here," my double whispered, their serpentine voice filling my senses. As though they were talking from within me. "You drew yourself here, and I drew you here. You've always been on your way to me from the beginning. All of your paths lead here."

I tried to speak, but I found the silence swallowing my voice like the vacuum of space.

"I... am the Darkness."

The words reverberated through my head uncomfortably. When I stared into the self-proclaimed Darkness' eyes, I just barely perceived a deeper abyss within their familiar dead black irises. Slit pupils of pure void throbbed near-imperceptibly like a necrotic wound.

"The Darkness?" I found the strength to speak, mildly surprising myself. It felt like I was drowning in the oppressive inky nothing. "And you're wearing my face?"

"Perhaps you are wearing mine." It sat with its legs crossed, wearing that oversized Naoetsu High girl's uniform like a bad joke at my expense.

"You believe that you came first?" I asked, my voice steady and devoid of mirth. The same could be said for the mocking smile that loomed over me. Joy was not a concept that applied to the thing that wore my skin.

"Who came first is irrelevant. For you and I and all those you saw refracted in the mirrors, there is only one thing that matters. It is our purpose."

"Making things 'proper,'" I replied, my own voice carrying a bitter aftertaste.

"Yes. At least you remember, even if you are a failure."

A failure. 

A failure. 

A failure. 

The words reverberated in my head, smashing painfully against the walls of my skull.

"Because I didn't finish the job?"

"Yes. You were worthless like the rest of them. Less than worthless... ahaha." Hearing my laugh spill from its lips was insulting. Something about the thing on the bookcase didn't quite fit together, like it rose from the depths of the uncanny valley.

"You are a living sin. A liar. And it's my job to punish liars."

"That was a lie in itself," I replied, as the twin abysses in our eyes stared unblinkingly into each other. "A childish fantasy. To suggest that I am truly an unknowable force of nature is nothing but delusional."

"For you." Its body was completely still, save for its wide false-smile as it spoke. "You saw hundreds of alternative paths today, in that liminal space that links us. Are you really so narcissistic that you assumed you were the 'true' Ougi?"

"Are you?"

"Naturally." It responded without hesitation. "I am unique from all the rest. The true ending.

Because I succeeded."

Its face filled my vision as its murmur pierced my brain. We were now mere inches apart, though there had been no movement.

"You made things 'proper?'" The word, once my only guide, now felt rotten on my tongue. I painstakingly lifted an arm, gesturing to the suffocating emptiness around us. "Is this what 'proper' looks like?"

"Yes." Not a shred of doubt. The gashes of impossibly deep void in its eyes were painful to look at. "I corrected this world, and the next world, and the next."

"This is not proper." My voice was cold. My hatred for this humorless parody rose steadily like bile in my throat. "This is not what I was meant for."

"You were not meant for anything." I felt its hand cup my face through the dangling sleeve. "You're simply a failure, a defect. A liar." There was a poor imitation of affection on its lifeless face. "Were you meant to succeed, you would have realized the truth. There is only one thing that is pure and proper in existence.

Zero."

Its words physically assaulted me again, and I felt myself flinch as a sharp pain blossomed in my chest, my gloved hand clutching the spot on reflex.

"Do you feel it?" the Darkness muttered, its cold breath brushing my ear as its arms embraced me from behind. "You're dying."

I couldn't reply. The pain was spreading, creeping through me like an infection. I kept my face steady, yet I felt my eye twitching.

"Are you unhappy, Ougi? Do you find this unfair?" It was in front of me again. When it spoke, oily black fog billowed heavily from its mouth. Its eyes were inhumanly wide, transfixing my gaze, filling my perception. "It's your fault. Pretending you are something you're not. Ignoring your proper role."

My jaw remained set, my face still. I was furious, but expressiveness was rarely my strong suit. My feelings don't operate the same way as a human's.

"Are you so sure of that?"

That knife-wound smile was dripping with sadistic pleasure as wisps of toxic black spilled down one after the other. There were no whites in its eyes now, only pure Darkness. The silence was growing louder in my ears.

"Allow me to demonstrate just how worthless you are."

Its hand reached forward and all at once the hot pain in my chest became pure agony. My ribs were twisting and cracking and the silence was a discordant roar. The pain spread to my mind, like I was filling with that black smoke, and something new rushed up through me.

Fear, sadness, anger, guilt and pain twisted together into a multicolored mess of noise within me. I thought that I had felt these things before, at least a little. I was wrong. Those were only faint echoes of what now screamed its way through every inch of my body.

I snapped.

"Ggghnhnkkh... GghghhaaAGGGHGHHH!"

It was a noise like I had never made in my short life, a raw and painful scream with no theatrics. Not worthy of any respectable work of fiction. It was ugly and mindless, and I felt my face contorting as my emotions finally reached it. I gritted my teeth and grunted, doubling over, shaking, clutching my head. It was loud inside, unbearably loud, violently fracturing my thoughts, half-intelligible repeated phrases crashing through my psyche like a swarm of bees as it twisted up on itself.

"I didn't plant any of this within you, Ougi." I could still hear its voice clearly through the screaming storm, its words forcing themselves brutally through my skull. I could no longer see straight. My vision was swimming with loud, bright static against the swallowing darkness.

"This was inside you. These human emotions that don't belong. You couldn't understand them because they're not meant for you, and you stupidly thought yourself above such things. Such a fool. A wretched and pitiful waste."

It felt like it was speaking directly into my mind, cutting its words into the grey matter and making them ring true.

Sound and sight became increasingly distorted. My fingers were digging painfully into my head as agony scraped itself across my vocal chords. My eyes were shaking, painfully wide, pupils jittering left and right.

I felt sick and afraid. I felt worthless. I knew nothing. The Darkness knew everything. I was pitiful, stupid and weak.

"Ahaha. You're crying." As it spoke I could feel something thick, hot and viscous boiling down my face. I looked down at my hands and saw black ichor dripping down into them.

Suddenly I was elsewhere. The empty classroom. The center was divided by thick glass, and on the other side I saw Araragi, my partner. His back was turned and he was speaking to Hitagi and Tsubasa.

I needed him. I needed him. Without him I really was incomplete, stupid, pointless. I wanted him, I wanted to touch him, I wanted him to hold and comfort me like he did for others. I found myself pressed up against the glass, crashing my fists painfully against it and screaming at the top of my lungs.

"ARARAGI!"

He didn't hear me. He didn't even flinch. I clawed pathetically at the glass, more thick hot black spilling from my eyes, from my mouth.

"You love him. You  _ love _ him." The monster's disgusted voice shocked through my head. Araragi was laughing on the other side of the glass with his friends. His human friends.

"You could never have succeeded. You were defective from the start. Thrash and scream and beg for attention all you want, you can never join them. You are not like them."

It was right. It was right. It knew me better than I did. The Darkness was pressing down invisibly on me now, heavy and crippling, crushing my heart in its vice grip as I slumped to my knees and wailed futilely at the glass.

I wanted to be like them.

Without warning I was now staring in a mirror in an abandoned house. I knew this place. It was where I first came into being.

My face looked awful. Black was spilling down from eyes, mouth and nose alike. I noticed wounds on my head from where I had gripped it hard enough to break the skin, and black poured from there just the same.

I finally understood that it was my blood. I had never seen it before.

"It's inhuman. Toxic. That's what you are. You're a sickness, Ougi. You were a sickness in Araragi's mind and you were given form. You're not human. You're a monster."

I groaned, leaning over and spitting blood into the sink, grasping it desperately as the voice assaulted me.

"How pitiful, that a living disease, a parasite with only one purpose, would fall prey to false hope. You are inherently negative, Ougi. You cannot create. You can only destroy. You can only hurt people. You've only made yourself a burden, pretending to be like them, harboring feelings you can't even process. It's as far from 'proper' as you could get."

I looked in the mirror at my wretched reflection and saw that thing wearing my face, standing some distance behind me. When I looked back it wasn't there.

"That's not all I am...!" I protested desperately, gripping the sink hard enough that it started to crack. My eyes were darkening, losing the whites. "I can help him! He gave me a place in the world!"

Humiliating. Melodramatic. Somewhere in the back of my head was a little voice telling me how out of character this was-- but I couldn't control myself. The Darkness had ripped out my heart and nailed it to my sleeve, every emotion brought to the surface and amplified a thousand times. It was truly pitiful.

"He only did it for himself," the voice hissed, scratching its way painfully through my body. I realized that I was clutching the sink harder than a human body could, just before it shattered completely in my hands, porcelain pieces spilling through my fingers.

"It was a journey of growth for him. You were just a means to an end. You've outlived your usefulness. Soon he won't need you at all. But who would want such a twisted creature around?"

My gaze was fixed upon my hands, and I noticed the leather of my gloves beginning to warp strangely. A spike of panic rose unbidden through my chest.

"Have you ever given thought to why you cover yourself so obsessively?"

The leather was cracking, beginning to flake off in pieces. I was shaking badly, and I understood.

"You're afraid of yourself. You want to ignore what you are. A parasite living a stolen life they don't deserve. As though Araragi's impulsive action and Meme's flimsy loophole excuse what you've done."

I remembered suddenly, or more accurately I was forced to remember. My unnatural birth, my time in this house. Even then, beneath the surface, on some level I felt guilty for what I was going to do. But I clung to my purpose because I had nothing else. Perhaps it's the same for other Oddities.

The gloves fell away, and on my hands I could see eyes, dozens of eyes piercing through me. I couldn't control my shock and I stumbled backwards, crashing down the stairs which then became more than stairs.

Every time I hit a step my clothes would change. Seifuku. Gakuran. Seifuku. Gakuran. Seifuku. Gakuran. Seifuku. Gakuran.

"You are a being born from sickness. You are inherently twisted and inhuman. Do you understand? Gender doesn't even apply to you and yet you fret over it as though you deserve your own identity when you're merely the malicious shadow of another."

Everything began flashing rapidly as the voice continued, berating and destroying me, repeating its vicious truths over and over. I was sinking into a black swamp, I was standing over the mangled corpses of Araragi's friends, my body was made of maggots, I was staring at Araragi's receding back, I was trapped in the cold cell of the empty classroom, there were eyes all over me and all around me, Hanekawa stared hatefully at me from far above, I was falling into an infinite abyss, Senjougahara was burning alive in front of me, my skin was peeling off, I was strapped to a table as Meme prepared to exorcise me, that awful Darkness was at my back trying to swallow me again--

I was kneeling over Araragi, clutching the hilt of a knife buried in his heart.

I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Then it all stopped. 

The bookcase was in front of me. I had collapsed on the intangible floor in an ugly heap, coughing black blood onto black void.

"Now you know what you really are, Ougi. The 'you' that you could not understand. You shouldn't exist, and soon, you won't."

The Darkness spoke flatly in my own voice, looming over me. I slowly, shakily lifted my head, staring up at it.

Those infinitely deep and hungry eyes threatened to consume me entirely.

"You should be thanking me for curing you of your delusion, but I know you won't." Now it was smiling again, as though it were having fun. "As you fade away like the rest, you can take solace in the thought that I will properly finish your job. I'll erase them and their worlds, as many times as it takes. There will be no more liars."

"A... Ahaha..."

I surprised myself with my own hoarse and wretched laugh, and I saw the ghost of displeasure on my doppelganger's smiling face as I shakily propped myself up, futilely wiping my bloodied mouth. My hands were still gloved, and the painful prickling of those thousand eyes had faded with the hellish nightmare.

Somehow, I managed to get to my feet. I had never felt so wretched. The horrific visions were only that, but the damage to my body was real. I was badly hurt, in the way that something like me can be.

"You shouldn't have shown me."

I spat a last glob of blood before feeling my lovely, charming smile creep across my face. Yes, that felt better. It's always best to face your problems with a smile.

"Oh? Please, do tell." The 'Darkness' crossed its legs, lifting its chin and raising its eyebrows in faint amusement.

"You're right... I'm not human. My blood is not red, I was born from no mother, and I can bear no children. My mind and my thoughts are fundamentally different, and so to be relatable to Araragi and his friends, I have to put on a performance. I have to 'translate' from the language of an apparition, a metaphysical being, to something a human could understand. And yet..."

Ah, this felt good. Satisfying. The 'villain' had handed me all the edge pieces on a silver platter, and now it was all clicking together, like the climax of a detective novel.

I continued just as my double was about to fill the lingering silence.

"And yet, you showed me just how 'human' I am underneath. Who knew I had so many different feelings? Guilt, sadness, fear, even unrequited love-- I really must be a high schooler after all."

"Hohoh..." The figure looming over me had the expression of a scientist observing a fascinating new behavior in insects. "That's what you took away from my little show?"

"It was foolish, really." I was still unsteady on my feet, but my smile never faltered. This was me. Back in character. "If you wanted to convince me that I'm a failure with your power over me, there are so many better ways you could have done it. Convincing me that I've done Araragi more harm than good, for instance. Instead, you've made me a sympathetic figure. I should thank you; this will make it easier to convince those exorcists of my worth, sentimental as they are."

"How unfortunate. I'll have to revise my approach for the next Ougi. Regrettably, you won't get the chance to prove anything; you're still dying, you know?"

"Ahaha." Indeed, crippling pain still pulsed through my whole body. It was a struggle merely to stay standing, and I could feel my strange blood dripping down my face. "Of course I won't die. I'm the main character this time, which means it's time for the big turnaround."

"You had better make it quick, then." My reflection tilted its head, staring at me with an almost pitying curiosity. "Soon, you'll start falling apart."

"It won't take long," I assured it, pausing to swallow back the blood pooling in my mouth. "I just have to take a cue from my partner. It centers around a single question:

Which one of us is the liar?"

"Hahaha..." Its smile only grew wider, and it was standing in front of me again, arms spread-- again, no movement, no transition. "A wager, then? That is truly amusing. Go ahead, then, but hurry up; you only have minutes left before speaking will become an issue."

"This journey was about a question, one that has been eating away at me even when I was not aware of it." I clasped my hands behind my back, smiling serenely. Small wisps of black smoke had begun escaping my lips. "'Who am I?' A timeless struggle even for those born with a right to live."

"And? Did you find your answer?"

"I did, thanks to you." I nodded, closing my eyes for a moment. Blood had begun dribbling from unseen wounds on my left arm. My body was crumbling, but my mind was sharper than ever. "And it's the answer to that very question which will decide the victor. I wonder, 'Darkness...' Why is my erasure so gradual? Why not merely swallow me, quickly and mercilessly, as the Darkness always does?"

It had no response.

"It's simple. You are not the Darkness. Like every reflection in this mirror-world, you are a part of me. Both an alternate timeline and a fragment of my own heart. However..."

I gestured to the pitch-dark void around us, watching the subtle twitch on my double's face. "Unlike myself, you have erased anything that could anchor you to existence. Even your own partner, your reason for being. You, like me, are merely a fabricated entity with the title 'Oshino Ougi.' The manifestation of a young man's regret. Even if you have gained some power and put on a frightening facade."

"Say it." It must have known what would come next. The look in its eyes was spiteful and defiant, though only I could have decoded it. "We'll see who's right."

"In this 'proper' world you've created, Oshino Ougi is not Araragi Koyomi. Oshino Ougi is not the Darkness. Oshino Ougi is not zero."

I spent a few precious seconds merely savoring the moment, before stepping forward, grabbing that pitiful, friendless Ougi by the collar. I took a deep breath, though I don't strictly need to breathe, and spoke the words, those laughable words; the conclusion, or rather, the punchline.

"Oshino Ougi is Oshino Ougi."

The effect was instant. The heavy blackness of that place was nothing compared to what now appeared behind the liar: a hole in existence, a pitiless and terrible Law of Nature.

The Darkness had appeared.

"...Aah, how disappointing..." Ougi shook their head, bringing a gloved hand to their face with a sad sort of smile. "So this is its judgment? After all I've done? I thought better of it."

"The Darkness is no one's ally," I remarked, my lovely smile becoming a smirk of satisfaction. "It merely is. It is the 'zero' of which you spoke, the most proper thing in existence, doing nothing but serving its purpose."

The pain was receding from my body, just as the oppressive presence was draining from the air. Ougi glanced back toward the void behind them, my grasp on their uniform keeping them from the increasing vortex that would soon pull them in.

"What would Araragi think, I wonder?" They met my gaze once more, a subtle fear in their eyes. They were begging for undeserved mercy in their own quiet way, just as I had done. "You're the 'hero' of this story, yet you'll subject me to the same fate you were spared? That would make you just like me, Ougi. A monster."

"Didn't I tell you? You are a part of me. That cruel and wicked impulse that takes joy in murder. I'm no longer the villain, yet..."

My smile widened, gleefully sadistic.

"I never said I was the hero."

And I let go.


	5. Epilogue

When I staggered out of the elevator doors, Araragi was there, staring dumbstruck at me and holding a crowbar.

"Ougi-chan!" He was alarmed by my ragged and bloody appearance, shooting to his feet. "What happened!? Gaen-san said something about you being in trouble in this building, and I've been trying to open the elevator doors but they're not responding--"

I smiled. Sincerely.

"You broke in just for me, Araragi-senpai? How sweet."

And then I collapsed against him, leaning against his chest. What a nice feeling. It's good to be rewarded for once.

"I love you, my foolish partner."

"O-Ougi-chan?" He was deliciously bewildered. Just the reaction I expected. His predictability was one of his most lovable aspects.

"I love you," I repeated plainly, snuggling up against him indulgently and closing my eyes, "and you'll never be rid of me."

Oshino Ougi is Oshino Ougi, and he'll just have to live with that.

I'm not going anywhere.


End file.
